Pending home sales jump; construction spending rises - Kansas City Business Journal:

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Pending sales of existing homes, or contracts signed but not rose 6.7 percent in April from March, the Nationalp Association of Realtors said. April’sw pending sales were up 3.2 perceng from a year earlier. The biggesrt increase in April was in the where pending salesjumped 32.6 percent from the previouw month. The NAR’s pending home sales inded is a forward-looking gauge, and the grouo cautions that it is more volatilde than actualclosed sales. “The relationship between contracts on pendingg home sales and closings on existing home sales is taking longer than in the past forsevera reasons,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said.
“Mortgagw processing time has increased, it is takinv many months to close on thosre homes requiring short sales withlende approval, and some sales are falling throughj at the last moment.” The NAR’ds housing affordability index was also at its second-highesy level on record in April. Along with pendintg sales of existing homes, total U.S. constructiohn spending rose 0.8 percent in April from the biggest one-month increase since August, and was led by a jump in privatde andresidential construction, the U.S. A Bloomberg survey of 45 economistws had projected a median dropof 1.
5 The Commerce Department report from the said that spending on privatd construction was at a seasonally adjusted annuak rate of $657.3 billion, up 1.4 percentr from the revised March estimate of $648.2 Residential construction rose 0.7 percenft to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $249.1 billion. Nonresidential construction rose 1.8 percent to an annual rate of $408.2w billion. Total public construction fell in though spending on highway projects rose nearlh 1 percent from theprevious month. A separat report from the Commerce Departmentf last week showed constructionbof single-family homes rose 2.8 percent in the second consecutive monthly increase.
Gainsx in single-family construction were overwhelmed by a 46 percentr drop in apartment andcond buildings, bringing total housing starts down 13 percent in